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Diane's Diary4/1 Monday We took the dinghy out to watch the local boats start from Lower Bay about a 5 minute dinghy ride (5 minutes with our new fast engine that is!) away from our boat. We got some great pictures at the start. Then we went back to the boat & Larry made a copy of the CD. I typed & tried to rest since I haven't been getting much sleep. We have been getting very loud music from shore at night that keeps us awake. Plus, the boat boys go zooming past our boat at high speeds & it hasn't been a very quiet anchorage. We left for the last awards giving party on shore at 4pm even though the awards didn't start until 4:30. We wanted to give the girl the CD we promised & hope to get a hat. She was very busy & seemed not very appreciative of the CD. She also told us the hats would be 100EC- $38USD! That was ridiculous as to enter the race only cost 120EC & you got 6 hats included in the price. She said the money was for the local youth group but we were very annoyed. If the hat had been as high as 50EC or $18USD we might have considered it, but at $38USD it was outrageous! After she said that, we shouldn't have given them the CD but we did! I just didn't like her attitude but I guess she was just busy trying to run the Regatta & didn't have time to be nice. Anyway, we saw our friends from Tornado & gave them the CD we took. I know they appreciated it. The awards ceremony didn't start until after 5pm & went on till 6:15pm. Alvin's wife gave us a jar of homemade guava jelly she made herself. It was extremely nice of her & we were lucky to meet such nice people. Anyway, I was fortunate to be walking next to the free booze tent when the awards finished & everyone ran to the tent. I was one of the first to get drinks & got us 2 beers. This award party is open to the whole town but they did not have a lot of booze- maybe this was done on purpose as everyone was crowding around. We were lucky to get 3 beers each as they were limiting the beer to 1 each but we didn't know this when we went back to get more. Anyway, we saw Alvin again. He had known we wanted one of the Mt.Gay hats & even though he only got one he gave it to us!! We were thrilled but didn't want to accept it, as we knew he only had that one. But he insisted we take it! Larry was thrilled to get it & even though Alvin gave the hat to me, Larry appropriated it! I know I'll never get to wear that hat! Anyway, we could not believe their generosity! We were very lucky to meet such nice people. We will have to think of something nice we can do for them. Anyway, we left about 6:30 & went back to the boat before it got to dark, as we didn't have a flashlight with us. 4/2 Tues We were woken in the middle of the night with sudden gusts of wind as high as 33 knots. (GWW told it was that high the next morning) We still had the awning up & the front piece over our hatch was really blowing so it kept us awake. Larry took it down around 6am as it was really keeping us up. For the past week we have had almost zero wind & now it suddenly picks up. It was gusting so this was not good for the wind generator, which prefers a steadier wind. We were going to leave for Canouan today so we were up early getting the boat ready to leave. We anticipated a large line to check out but were surprised when there wasn't one. Maybe that's because we were the second people on line to check out when the office opened at 8:30am. Larry checked out & then went to use the Internet café. We decided to check out here because we didn't like Clifton Harbor on Union Island, the southern island to clear out at. The holding is terrible & you have to walk out to the airport to get to immigration although customs is in town. In all, it's a hassle & we just decided to bypass it. Anyway, Larry went to the Internet café because you need to access the hotmail account at least once a month or they delete your messages & cancel the account. So, we always make sure we try to access the account at least once a month to keep it active. He went to get gas, as we were very low with dinghy gas but surprise- no gas! They said they were expecting the boat to come in so we should just look for it. We thought about leaving without it but knew we didn't have enough gas to see the Tobago Cays, Mayreau, & Canouan. The Tobago Cays is definitely someplace you don't want to have to row! We also knew there is no place to buy gas at those 3 places so we were kind of stuck. This engine uses a lot more gas than our 5HP- about 3 times as much! When we get to Trinidad we knew we needed to buy a spare gas tank as the one we have know only holds 2 gal & that won't be enough. But it looks like we really could have used a spare now. The gas tank the engine came with holds 6.3US gallons where we only used a 2-gallon tank with our 5HP. So, we had to stay until the gas comes in. Since the entire island has no gas, we don't think it will be very long. I went to visit Alvin's mother to bring her a baseball hat (Blue water sailing) I had for Alvin. We wanted to give him something for giving us the hat. We also gave her some more candy for the boy Justin they are watching & some nutri grain bars. She gave us some more grapefruit & guava. We were very lucky to meet them- they were so nice to us. We just hung out for the day doing nothing hoping to see the gas tanker come in but it never did. Hopefully, it will be here tomorrow! We also took down our awning in anticipation of leaving tomorrow. We went swimming to the beach & it was very nice since it wasn't crowded. The harbor really has emptied out today with many boats leaving now that the regatta is over. |